Many industries have obvious sales off-peak and peak seasons, and the sales between off-season and peak season are very different, which causes great fluctuations and difficulties for enterprises in the employment, capital and business management of the two states. So, what issues should companies with low and peak sales seasons pay attention to in their management and operations in order to maximize cost control and improve operational quality?

1. Off-season personnel management

The key to human resource management in off-season is to control human resource costs and improve personnel quality.

1． Controlling human resource costs

There are generally three ways to control human resource costs: layoffs, adjustment of human resource structure, and establishment of a reasonable and effective incentive mechanism. It is necessary to be able to control people, make good use of them, and let people give full play to their enthusiasm. A salary system that meets the characteristics of off-peak and peak seasons must be established as a support for the entire management system.

(1). Appropriate layoffs

Since production and sales are significantly reduced in the off-season, many companies generally resort to layoffs in the off-season. This approach is understandable, but the key is how to connect human resources between off-season and peak seasons, so that the normal operation of production and sales in peak seasons cannot be affected by layoffs in off-seasons.

When it comes to the selection of layoff targets, job types with low technical content and low proficiency requirements should be chosen for off-season layoffs, because companies can easily recruit such employees during peak seasons. According to the characteristics of the off-peak and peak seasons, Yanji Airport adopts the method of taking turns to take holidays in the off-season for some positions that require a certain business level and operational skills, achieving the purpose of saving expenses and ensuring work quality.

Even if the layoffs are assembly line workers, some reasonable policies must be formulated to attract these people to come back in the next peak season, because choosing skilled workers can reduce training time and achieve the purpose of improving efficiency. Shenzhen Baoji Company mainly produces Christmas trees. The peak production season is five months before Christmas every year, and then enters the off-season. In order to attract skilled employees to return, the company stipulates that workers who return to work before the peak season of the following year can be reimbursed for part of their travel expenses (without receipts). It not only controls labor costs in the off-season, but also maintains a high return rate. Most of the workers on vacation choose to work in other factories, and there is no big loss.

Generally speaking, companies should not lay off employees in more technical jobs, or employees with more important responsibilities - such as middle management/marketing personnel. Because these technical employees need to be trained and tempered for a long time, the experience and interpersonal resources of marketing personnel also need time to accumulate. If these people are laid off, not only will it not be able to save costs for the company, it may also cause huge losses.

Efficiency is low because of unskilled business; because it takes time to adapt to each other and build trust, communication costs are increased, and marketing promotion is greatly reduced.

(2). Adjust personnel structure and business process reorganization

Although layoffs can reduce labor costs in the short term, the negative effects cannot be ignored. Companies pursuing excellence must pay attention to their public image and should try their best to weaken the impact of layoffs on the company through management improvements. impact. Some companies adopt a combination of fixed workers and temporary workers, combined with reasonable arrangements of working hours, which not only maintains the stability of the workforce, enhances cohesion, but also meets the work requirements during peak seasons, and significantly reduces complaints and complaints among the workforce. negative public opinion.

Successful business process reorganization can improve the operational efficiency of the system, but temporary chaos will inevitably occur in the early stage of reorganization, especially when the business process involves customers. For example, order response process, return and exchange process, rebate process, etc. Therefore, companies should try their best to place this kind of process reorganization in the off-season when business volume is low, so that even if chaos occurs, losses will be smaller.

(3)． Establish a salary system that meets the characteristics of off-peak and peak seasons

Personnel management must be combined with the salary system, using the power of economic leverage to mobilize the enthusiasm of personnel, and achieve a good balance between human resource costs and benefits. It is the core of all management.

For an enterprise that has fluctuations in off-peak and peak seasons, it should establish a salary system that meets its characteristics. Due to the different performance in off-peak and peak seasons, it should also be reflected in the salary system. The general approach is to set a basic salary, that is, a basic salary, which is the same in off-peak and peak seasons, and is a rigid part; on this basis, add flexible parts according to the characteristics of peak seasons, such as overtime pay, performance bonuses, etc., on the one hand, to mobilize the enthusiasm of personnel, and on the other hand, Make up for the relatively low basic salary and ensure the attractiveness of the salary as a whole.

2. Improve personnel quality and strengthen personnel training

The off-season is a good time to organize employee learning. First of all, in terms of time, during the peak season, the company's production and sales tasks are tight, and participating in training has a greater impact on the business, while during the off-season, time is relatively abundant. Secondly, in terms of training effects, since employees have relatively light work tasks during the off-season, the learning effect is guaranteed.

The most important thing is that in the off-season, corporate employees can summarize the shortcomings of their work in the peak season, find out the gaps with competitors, and propose targeted learning content.

In terms of specific time arrangement, training should be placed in the middle of the off-season. Because the training is carried out immediately after the peak season, everyone has not yet recovered from fatigue. The tense nerves have just relaxed and they have to devote themselves to the training. The employees are more or less resistant. If training is conducted late in the off-season, the learning content may not be digested before being put into the next busy peak season, and the training effect will not be very good.

2. Off-season fund management

In the off-season, due to the decline in sales, the return of corporate funds decreases; however, expenditures such as raw material procurement and R&D expenses continue to increase, which will produce varying degrees of losses. Financial constraints. How to prevent payment crises in enterprises during the off-season and maintain the balance of cash flow is what enterprise managers must consider.

1. Supervise dealers to collect payment

After entering the off-season, urging dealers to collect payment has become an important task for enterprises. Only by collecting payment in time and quickly withdrawing funds can enterprises Only by ensuring the safety of corporate funds and ensuring the true realization of corporate profits can we ensure that there are sufficient funds to cope with various costs and expenses during the off-season.

First of all, you can develop a payment reward system to reduce accounts receivable and ensure the safety of corporate funds and healthy cash flow. A certain wine company stipulates that dealers who settle the payment in the same month can enjoy a rebate of 1% of the total monthly sales volume, and dealers who have no accounts receivable for 180 consecutive days can enjoy a rebate of 0.5% of the total sales volume for 180 days. , dealers with no accounts receivable throughout the year enjoy a rebate of 0.5% of total sales, and the above rewards can be accumulated. Use channel incentive strategies to stimulate the return of capital flows.

Secondly, as companies enter the off-season, they can increase their efforts to collect payments. Some companies regard supervising payment collection as a major task in the off-season. A payment collection team composed of marketing personnel and legal advisors fully communicates with dealers to increase the sales fund recovery rate to more than 95% and maintain the normal operation of the company's finances.

In the process of collecting accounts receivable, sales staff should be the mainstay and financial staff should be the supplement. Through practice, Lenovo found that sales staff are more effective than financial staff when it comes to repayment issues, because sales staff are familiar with customers and are more aggressive in repayment, while financial staff cannot easily solve the problem. Based on their experience in developed countries, some multinational companies have adopted a practice where financial personnel are responsible for collecting payments, which does not work well in China.

Also, the amount of rebates should be linked to sales staff bonuses to stimulate the completion of performance indicators. The specific method is to use the actual amount of payment as the base to distribute bonuses, rather than the contract amount or the customer's delivery amount as the base. This policy will encourage salespeople to pay attention to collection and credit risks, thereby reducing the number of accounts receivable and bad debts.

2. Unified allocation of funds

For group companies, which have multiple subsidiaries or holding companies, when the products of some wholly-owned subsidiaries or holding companies are in off-season sales At that time, other subsidiaries may be in peak season, so the group can balance the off-season funding problems of subsidiaries through the allocation of funds from subsidiaries. This is generally solved by setting up a settlement center or an internal bank.

Since the group has control over the financial situation of each member or branch, and major raw material purchases and external investments need to be authorized and approved by the group, when a group member is short of purchasing funds in the off-season, the group can First of all, using the surplus funds of other sub-members not only avoids expanding the scale of foreign debt, but also reduces the overall deposit balance of the group and improves the efficiency of the use of funds.

Ordos Cashmere Group Co., Ltd. is subject to the seasonal staggered constraints of funds in the cashmere industry, and the funding "bottleneck" is more prominent during the peak season of raw material acquisition every year. Starting from April, the purchase of raw materials enters the peak season, while April to August is basically the off-season for sales, and capital demand fluctuates greatly. In this case, the group company determined a fund management system centered on the internal bank and adopted the "four unifications" (unification of institutions, personnel, systems, funds, and separation of accounting for each member), which effectively solved the problem of financing for the purchase of raw materials in the off-season. need.

3. Encourage channel dealers to purchase goods in the off-season

In some industries, when sales are off-season, production is in peak season. At this time, there will be great pressure on capital inventory. In order to reduce pressure, dealers can be encouraged to directly purchase goods in the off-season, and various preferential policies such as prices and promotions can be used to stimulate dealers to prepare goods in the off-season, and social resources can be used to disperse the pressure and risks of enterprises.

In the air-conditioning industry, the off-season payment discount policy pioneered by Gree has been implemented for several years, and the effect is very obvious. The preferential policies introduced by some companies are: if dealers make payments in the off-season, they will not only get the benefit of discounted interest from the company, but also get free sales during the peak season, which is very attractive to dealers.

In fact, it has become a common practice for dealers in some industries to make payments during the off-season. If a company does not do this, it will lose its competitiveness. Color TV giant Changhong was making air conditioners, but it suffered losses because it failed to pay attention to the unique "off-season payment" rule of the air-conditioning industry.

Since Changhong mainly relies on color TV channels to sell air conditioners, dealers selling color TVs will not be able to recognize this special repayment model in the air conditioner industry in the short term, and Changhong does not regard this matter as an off-season strategy. From the perspective of tasks, there was no in-depth communication with dealers, no supporting preferential policies, and no necessary pressure. This resulted in Changhong's insufficient air-conditioning orders during the off-season, which not only affected production in the off-season, but also directly affected market sales in the peak season.

Purchasing goods in the off-season is also beneficial to dealers. On the one hand, they can obtain lower prices and reduce procurement costs; on the other hand, they can ensure sufficient inventory and avoid the unfavorable situation of product out-of-stock during peak seasons. At the same time, stocking up during the off-season will also help maintain relationships with suppliers. In 1991, Suning Appliance pioneered a new model of dealers paying manufacturers during the off-season. It received huge support from manufacturers and accumulated market advantages, laying the foundation for later market development.

While companies encourage dealers to prepare goods in the off-season, if it is futures (such as air conditioners), it is easier to handle; if it is spot goods, manufacturers need to pay attention to controlling the delivery quantity and should not require dealers to increase their inventory. pressure. Because when too many goods are in the hands of dealers, they are likely to be unable to withstand the temptation of "cash withdrawal" and sell them at low prices, resulting in off-season dumping and channeling of goods, leading to the collapse of the price system established by the enterprise, resulting in The harms are likely to outweigh the benefits of such a policy.

4. Coordination of production and sales in low and peak seasons

1. Coordination of production and sales

The procurement of production materials is related to whether the enterprise can produce normally and the production cost and In terms of profitability, for companies with off-peak and peak sales seasons, the production and sales of their upstream suppliers also have the characteristics of off-peak and peak seasons. For enterprises with relatively sufficient funds, large-scale purchases of raw materials or prepayment orders during the off-season can not only ensure that the cost of raw materials is controllable, but also keep the total cost at a low level and gain a cost advantage; it can also Fully prepare for the next step of production, effectively avoiding the risk of raw material shortages that may occur during peak season production. Secondly, companies can also establish strategic partnerships with suppliers through equity investment and other methods, so as to gain a greater degree of competitive cost advantage.

Enterprises with characteristics of off-peak and peak seasons need to solve the coordination problem between production and sales. Taking the real estate industry as an example, the real estate market has peak and off-season differences within a year, and now new pre-sale management is being implemented. method, so choosing the time to go public is a key issue. Therefore, real estate companies must plan ahead. Generally speaking, once a company obtains land, it must consider the impact of the off-peak and peak seasons in terms of construction start, progress, and listing. When a real estate company has multiple projects, it needs to strike a balance between projects. Some projects can be completed and listed before this peak season, and some projects can wait until the next peak season to complete. This will also help reduce financial pressure.

Some companies with many product types and specifications will have structural disconnects in production and sales. Some products produced are out of stock, and certain specifications of products are backlogged in large quantities. The reason for this problem is the disconnect between sales forecast and production plan. The main reason is the lack of information communication between the sales department and the production department, the distortion of the sales forecast of the sales department, etc. The solution is to strengthen communication between the production and sales departments, and adjust the sales forecast in a timely manner based on the collected market information so that the production plan can be modified in a timely manner.

2. Enough is enough when going against the market

The rules of off-peak and peak sales seasons in the industry will change due to changes in the industry itself. On the other hand, due to the vastness of the Chinese market, market characteristics vary from place to place. Same. When there is an off-season in some places, the market in other places is not the same as the off-season. Enterprises should promptly discover new market opportunities in the off-season according to the industry development status and regional market characteristics. By increasing sales in the off-season, sometimes they can obtain unexpected gains. harvest.

According to general rules, the winter and summer vacations each year are the peak sales seasons for home computers, and there is a long off-season in between. Many manufacturers have become accustomed to releasing products and marketing according to this rhythm. But in early 2002, Founder Computer Company's first-line market statistics showed that as the home market has gradually matured in recent years, most home computer users purchase products at any time based on their needs, not just during winter or summer vacations.

In the first quarter of 2002, Founder’s home computer spring sales promotions covered 29 provincial cities and achieved excellent results with a year-on-year increase of 55%. This was all due to Founder Computer’s ability to discern market trends and discover A good opportunity to sell against the market.

3. Prices are different in off-peak and peak seasons

Price is an important lever to adjust purchases. Generally, prices are lowered during the off-season. There is also an opposite strategy. Product prices are not only lower during the off-season. Instead of falling, it rises. In November 2004, it was the off-season for the sales of air conditioners, electric fans and other products. However, products such as Kelon and Chunlan increased to varying degrees, with an average increase of 10 yuan to 30 yuan per unit. According to the manufacturer's explanation, the price increase The reason is due to rising raw material prices, but the real reason is a tacit understanding in the oligopolistic market.

A small price increase in the off-season will not affect the purchasing decisions of consumers who want to buy. However, manufacturers can increase their income and at the same time raise the overall price level, leaving more room for price cuts in the next peak season. room for maneuver.

For enterprises with cyclical low and peak seasons, the core of their management is to enable the enterprise to use its own resources flexibly and balancedly. If the seasonality or cyclicality of an enterprise is too strong, the operating risks will will increase, so management should be implemented to reduce risks. In terms of specific means, methods such as controlling costs and improving internal operating order can be adopted. Most enterprises have great potential to tap in aspects such as supply chain management and capital management. Based on this, they can not only comprehensively and effectively reduce costs, but also improve the overall management quality of the enterprise, making the enterprise more comfortable during the peak season.